Western sanctions will not make Moscow change its stance on Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

“In general, the apologist of sanctions is the United States, they are fans of sanctions. And adherence to this practice, like a bacillus, has now spread to Europe. Probably they think that by imposing sanctions they will force us to change our position. That is clearly out of the question here. None of us will change our consistent position,” Peskov said.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Tuesday that the European Union and the United States were launching an “economic war” against Russia.

“This is not the first statement of this kind. Now these aggressive actions against our country are ultra-concentrated, but these actions took place before, it’s just that they were not visible to the naked eye, but experts were perfectly aware of all the discriminatory measures, measures of unfair competition and so on. It was all there before, just now it is extremely concentrated and the masks have been removed,” Peskov said.

The West is imposing increasingly sweeping sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, which began last Thursday. Russia calls its actions a special operation to “demilitarize and denazify” the neighboring country.

On Monday, Russian and Ukrainian representatives held their first talks since the fighting began and found “some points” to bring their positions closer together.

“It is too early to make assessments now, we would not want to do it prematurely. We have to analyze them and then already think about the prospect,” Peskov said.

According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin is not yet planning a conversation with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

Peskov said Kiev’s application for EU membership should be considered separately from Russia’s demands to ensure Ukraine’s neutral status.

“The EU is not a military-political bloc, in this respect, in terms of strategic security issues, this topic lies on a different plane. In the Ukrainian constitution, the orientation to join the EU is fixed in writing, but probably this process should be considered separately,” he said.

European Union leaders may discuss the possibility of Ukraine’s EU membership at an informal summit in March, a senior EU official said on Monday, adding that the issue is important for Ukraine in its negotiations with Russia on ending the conflict.